High Contrast

There are people out there that despite all the new hobbies and past-time activities, still prefer to read. Even if paperback books are still a great choice, some readers have embraced the online medium, as this provides instant access to almost any reading material. However, staring at a screen for hours comes with a price, especially for those with eye sensitivity or other vision issues. But as each problem comes with an answer, or multiple ones, so does this issue. High Contrast is an intuitive Chrome extension that lets you apply a handful of filters that can reduce eyestrain, and more importantly, make any page easier to read.

After the extension is added, you can access its menu by clicking the green icon from the extension bar. High Contrast sports a very simple menu, from where you can switch between the five available filters. You can also employ the use of a couple of buttons and hotkeys that let you disable the extension, or revert a page back to its normal view.

By default, the application will make use of the Inverted Color filter, which in most situations applies a dark theme to the pages. If the dark background is incorrigible or doesn't help with your reading, you can switch to the rest of the filters and see which one is best for you.

The first in line — Increased Contrast — keeps the original theme but amps up the contrast, making the colors stronger. The Grayscale/Grayscale Inverted effect, however, removes all color, causing your screen to look like an early black and white screen. As for the Yellow on Black filter, this one will cover everything in shades of yellow and black. While this combination is not bad, on some pages, the yellow may seem too bright and tiresome.

To disable the extension, one can either use the UI button or the SHIFT + F11 hotkey. You can also use the SHIFT + F12 combo, which switches everything back to Normal, basically removing any other filter.

In conclusion, High Contrast is a neat and stable extension that can apply some filters over your screen in order to reduce eyestrain, make reading easier, or change the overall appearance of a website.